Monthly Archives: June 2014

As the debates and discussions continue to swirl around the war in Iraq, the War on Terror, Afghanistan, Iran, nuclear weapons, and other geopolitical topics, I hear a growing drumbeat within the Republican Party of isolationism. It seems to be coming from those of the libertarian bent. I find that in most instances, I agree with my libertarian brothers and sisters, but in this area, I have to disagree. If I had to sum up libertarian philosophy, in this and other areas, such as the war on drugs, it would be stated thus; “To each his own, and let the chips fall where they may.” I, for one, don’t trust that the chips will fall where I or the citizenry necessarily want them to. I realize that within the sandbox that makes up the world, there are those who would do me harm.

There was a time in America’s past that we could be isolationist, self-contained if you will, but those days are long past. We are intertwined with the rest of the world in many ways, not the least of which is economically. To think we can live in a world, absent the influence of other cultures and nations, is shortsighted at best. What happens throughout the rest of the world matters to us immensely. It is in our best interest to be involved and have as much influence as we can. If we don’t, then someone else will. Can you imagine the impact on our economy if the oil from the Middle East suddenly dried up as if a spigot were turned off? Devastating. I will further explain what I mean through a hypothetical and then use a real life example.

Imagine living in a small town in America. Your neighborhood is on the west side of the tracks; mostly peaceful, but if it isn’t there’s a Neighborhood Watch program. Across town, on the east side of the tracks is a neighborhood, much different from yours, that is featured nightly in the police section of the newspaper. You don’t worry too much about what’s going on over there. It doesn’t affect you. Then you hear that a group of young males from that neighborhood were seen harassing and bullying customers coming in and out of the Wal-Mart. The one where you shop. Still, you don’t worry. You just change your habits and only go to Wal-Mart during the mid-day hours. And you make sure to stay out of their neighborhood. Then you read where these same young males have come into your neighborhood and are robbing elderly people’s homes and beating up some of the neighborhood kids. What do you do? Is this now your problem? How long do you wait before reacting, or should you wait until they knock on your front door?

Chicago has turned into the real life example of the above hypothetical. Gangs that were once limited to terrorizing the south side of the city have now regularly been seen on the Gold Coast, robbing, bullying, harassing, and intimidating law-abiding citizens. In the real life example, as would be applicable in the hypothetical, the police have been called in. Unfortunately for Chicago, the police have been ineffective, not because they can’t, but because there isn’t the political will to stop the violence.

The reality is this: there are “gangs” (terrorists) in the Middle East who are terrorizing their neighborhood. They’ve made it known that they are not only going to continue their ways, but that they are intent on coming to our neighborhood. Do we wait for that to happen before doing anything? Oh, it has happened you say. So what do we do? The isolationists say we should just retreat to our borders and wait. What goes on over there is none of our business. But it is our business. In this real world situation, we can’t call the police. The reality is that we are the world’s policeman. If we don’t fulfill that role, the vacuum left will create conditions that we may not be able to live with. There was a man in England that thought he could just ignore Germany and that the Nazis would stay in their neighborhood. He was content to stay out of Germany’s affairs. He soon saw his error, as the Luftwaffe dropped tons of bombs on the city of London.

Maybe the discussion isn’t so much that we should or shouldn’t, but how we should. I would agree with my libertarian friends to stay out of there if, a. we had no Americans in the Middle East, b. we had no businesses in the Middle East, c. we weren’t purchasing a commodity that we are totally dependent upon for survival from them, and d. if our enemy wasn’t there. I have a son who served two tours in Iraq and saw many of his friends die in the effort. I understand the cost even though many of our politicians don’t. And yet, there is a reason we were and are there. To protect our country. Not just for today, but for generations.

I think I could convince my friends to agree with me if I told them that while over there, our military would do what Samuel Gerard suggested in The Fugitive, “What I want from each and every one of you is a hard-target search of every gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse and doghouse in that area.” I’ll add here, “And once we find them, kill the bastards; every one of them.” I believe that if our military were allowed to do what they were trained to do, the libertarians would have a different opinion. I think what the libertarians are really saying, and I agree with them, is this, “If we’re going to continue our feckless course of action in the Middle East, building schools and roads, training civilians in military maneuvers, and playing politics, then let’s bring the troops home.” If we were truly killing the bad guys, I think most Americans would be all for it, as would most of the military. We either kill them there, or wait until they come into our neighborhood to kill us. They aren’t going away.

This picture begs many questions, but here are a few. Will this “family pool” be adequate when the next two members of the Bay family arrive? Would this be considered an above ground pool? Why would Mom be wearing a bathing cap? It isn’t as if she was expecting to dive for pennies on the bottom of the pool. Is this the pool in which Vicki and Ronnie learned the backstroke? For more insights on the Bay family and answers to some of these questions, read Little Heathens. Available at most online retail sites including Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Books A Million.

The year was 1933 and America was in the depths of the Great Depression. As our newly elected president was contemplating what to say in his inaugural address, here is what he and the nation faced:

25 percent of all workers and 37 percent of all non-farm workers were completely out of work. Some people starved; many others lost their farms and homes. Homeless vagabonds sneaked aboard the freight trains that crossed the nation (giving Woody Guthrie and Jimmy Rodgers something to sing about). Dispossessed cotton farmers, the “Okies,” stuffed their possessions into dilapidated Model Ts and migrated to California in the false hope that the posters about plentiful jobs were true.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt rightly sensed that Americans needed some confidence, some words of encouragement; a shot in the arm. In the midst of his address he uttered this now famous line:

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

My comment on that comment was uttered by an even more famous president, Abraham Lincoln:

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.

With all due respect to Frankie, I have to side with Abe on this one. He may have fooled the others, but he doesn’t fool me. Nothing to fear, but fear?! You have to be kidding me. I was afraid of everything (this list is exhaustive, but not all-inclusive): needles, spankings, scary movies, doctors, dogs, lockjaw, fear itself, girls, neighborhood bullies, cows, loud noises, Dad, dying, etc. I had nightmares. I avoided going into certain places (anywhere dark to be exact). I was even known to scare myself; it didn’t take much to frighten me. Of course, like me, but not as severe, were my three siblings who were afraid of a few things themselves.

Some people would refer to the four of us as “a handful,” in the same way a trek up Mount Everest would be referred to as a “good stretch of the legs,” yet Mom seemed to maintain her sanity for the most part. There were times, however, that she needed to get away from us (not to be confused with us getting away from her) for a time, to engage in adult conversation with regular human beings. There was one hurdle to overcome; finding someone willing to babysit us, if only for a couple of hours. After numerous phone calls to potential sitters, it seemed strange that they all had “sudden emergencies” to attend to during the two hours in question. Not to be deterred, Mom came up with another plan. She decided to drop us off at the movie theater and while we were safely in the care of the public, she would go to the beauty parlor and get her hair done. The timing couldn’t have worked out better for her. The particular movie didn’t matter much to Mom, and as she drove away, the three of us turned to Vicki who had all the money.

This movie seemed innocent enough; after all, Jerry Lewis was a comedian, so what could possibly be amiss? In The Nutty Professor, Lewis plays a nerdy professor who discovers a potion that when consumed, turns him into a suave, handsome, ladies man and this allows him to pursue the girl he has a crush on, played by Stella Stevens. The movie was initially pretty boring for us kids, until one particular scene.

As the professor drinks his magic potion, the music begins to turn eerie, which perks up the attention of four little kids sitting side by side in the dark theater (other than us, there weren’t many people watching the matinée). Our eyes became as large as saucers when the camera panned to the professors hand, which began to grow thick, brown hair and resembled something more like that of a Werewolf. This was all I needed to see and within seconds I was out in the lobby (I could still hear the scary music and other sounds emanating from the professor and my imagination went into overdrive). If I had stayed in the theater, I would have seen the complete transformation of the professor, as he knocked over test tubes and beakers that fell to the ground and shattered, and then finally emerged as Buddy Love. The entire scene lasted around a minute, but I wasn’t taking any chances.

The young man behind the concession counter asked, “Hey kid, what are you doing out here? Are you going to buy some popcorn? Candy?”

“What? No, I don’t have any money. Can I stay out here for a while?”

“No. You have to go in the theater. You can’t stay out here.”

By this time, it was all four of us out in the lobby. We huddled together and weren’t about to go back into the theater until an usher came out and coaxed us along. The movie was now back in the boring mode, so we stayed put for a while. When the scene switched to the laboratory and the music changed to scary, we didn’t wait around for the transformation; instead moving en masse to the lobby. This time we were threatened.

“You kids get back in there, or I’ll go get your mother” the usher warned.

I wasn’t concerned and replied, “Good luck if you can find her. She went to get her hair done and we don’t know where she is.”

For the remainder of the show, we stayed one step ahead of the usher by moving between the lobby and the bathrooms and even hiding behind the cameraman’s perch. We actually watched about fifteen minutes of the one hundred and seven minute movie. When the movie finally ended, Mom was out front to pick us up.

This story was a brief excerpt from the book Little Heathens, which can be found on most online retail sites.